Anwr

[Colleen Thomas]

I know 'Pam' quite well. She is about as far left as a person can get, I can't think of anyone who is more unfriendly to industry, be it drilling, logging, or mining. The very definition of 'environazi'.

I never said the Prudhoe Bay field was perfect, nor is any worsite on the face of the earth. Despite the doom and gloom tone of the snippet you posted, the cleanup and ongoing production in Prudhoe Bay has a very good record when compared to other areas.

The article stated that there are an average of 409 spills a year. You might be interested to know what qualifies as a spill. Of course they count oil, condensate, drilling mud, grease, diesel, etc... What makes one wonder, is that they consider anything over a cup a spill for their purposes (BLM and other agencies consider anything over 10 gallons a reportable spill). In addition, any other substance that hits the ground, is considered a spill. Including but not limited to: gravel, dirt, coffee, water, gatorade, etc...

You choose to believe the absolute worst possible scenario.

I choose to believe people are more sensitive to environmental concerns than they are given credit for.

As I've said in another post, I see the 'new oilfield' on a daily basis. The carefree days of 10 years ago don't exist anymore. Environmental concerns are at the top of the list on every jobsite. I see this happening, you don't. You don't have anything other than reams of old records and biased reporting to go by. The archaic methods that caused problems in the past are gone forever.

Oh yes, gone forever, all the way back to 1998. Gone forever, that spill I posted was on the 16 of arpil 2006. Oh yes gone forever my freind, just like it was...well day before yesterday! But we promise, it's all under control now. Yes sireee, no more spills like that one, at least none today.

 

[WyoD_S]

Alaskan oil spill alarms ignored

April 22, 2006

By WESLEY LOY Anchorage Daily News

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — A pipeline leak-detection system sounded warnings on four straight days in the week leading up to last month's record North Slope oil spill, but field workers interpreted the signals as false alarms, a new investigative report says.

The report, prepared by a team of BP and state investigators, confirms that the leak from a large Prudhoe Bay oil field pipeline went on undetected for at least five days "and probably much longer."

The highly technical, 125-page report also suggests that the pipeline's leak- detection system is effective only in catching leaks that release large volumes of oil rapidly. It doesn't work well in detecting small, slow leaks that over time can result in large spills.

A Prudhoe Bay worker driving along the pipeline discovered the spill March 2 after catching a whiff of petroleum in the air.

Spill responders estimate 201,000 gallons, or 4,790 barrels, of oil oozed over almost 2 acres of snow-covered tundra and the edge of a frozen lake. Corrosion was blamed for eating an almond-sized hole in the steel pipeline, which remains out of service for repairs.

The line is a major artery in the web of pipes that drain the Prudhoe Bay field, the nation's largest.

BP this week presented the investigative report to the state Department of Environmental Conservation, which continues to weigh a fine or other penalties against BP. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency also is conducting a criminal investigation, BP spokesmen have said.

The seven-member investigative team included BP managers and engineers based in Alaska as well as Houston, BP attorney Randal Buckendorf, a Prudhoe field worker representing the United Steelworkers union, and Gary Evans, a DEC environmental specialist.

The report says that on four consecutive days, Feb. 25-28, the pipeline's leak-detection alarms went off "but were ruled out as a spill" after people monitoring the system considered a variety of technical factors.

For one thing, a leak should have been indicated by readings on an adjoining segment of the pipeline, but that wasn't the case, the investigators found.

Other factors also made the three-mile pipeline prone to false leak alarms, the report says. The oil flowing through it had a relatively high level of sediment, and the amount of oil moving through the line can fluctuate depending on output from an upstream oil processing plant.

All those factors create "noise" that can mask indications of an actual leak, especially a small one, the report says.

Under state regulations, the pipeline's detector is supposed to be able to spot a leak amounting to 1 percent or more of daily throughput. The leak was too much of a trickle to hit that trigger, the investigators found.

Still, the leak detector emitted alerts because it was set on high sensitivity to detect a leak as small as 0.5 percent of daily throughput.

Engineers and other workers who monitor the system were aware of the warnings but determined the alarms were false, the report says.

It stops short of blaming anyone for the spill.

A $6 million cleanup of the oiled tundra is essentially complete, and DEC officials say they believe environmental damage to the tundra will be minimal.

Taking the leaky pipeline out of service for weeks caused North Slope oil production to decline by as much as 12 percent or 100,000 barrels per day, but BP says it has restored most of that production by routing oil down other pipelines.

Federal pipeline regulators have ordered BP to closely inspect the leaky pipe and two other major trunk lines to look for potential trouble spots. They also ordered the company to step up the use of pigs — bullet-shaped devices that slide through pipelines to look for corrosion or to swab out sludge.

The above-ground pipeline leaked at a point where it passed through a mound of gravel known as a caribou crossing, which works as a sort of bridge for the migratory animals.

In 1998, a pig run identified six spots at the caribou crossing where corrosion was chewing pits into the pipe's inner wall. One of those six was where the oil leaked, the report says.

BP had not done another pig run since 1998 to test for internal corrosion.

Maureen Johnson, a BP senior vice president, has said the company plans to work with the DEC on ways to detect smaller spills that might evade leak detectors.

One idea, she said, might be to increase the use of aerial infrared surveys, which can spot warm oil obscured by snow.

BP runs Prudhoe and owns 26 percent of the production. The biggest Prudhoe owners are Exxon Mobil and Conoco Phillips, each with about 36 percent.



Ya sure you want to hold this up as concrete evidence that there won't be severe ecolgical damage?

A $6 million cleanup of the oiled tundra is essentially complete, and DEC officials say they believe environmental damage to the tundra will be minimal.

It is being cleaned up, with minimal damage. How does minimal, equal severe, in anyones book? Oh, and that's the DEC (Department of Environmental Conservation) stating there will be minimal damage, not BP or some oil company.

 

[WyoD_S]

· BP Amoco, despite impressive environmental rhetoric, has their own list of shame. On Sept. 23, 1999, BP Amoco pled guilty to a federal felony connected to illegal dumping of hazardous waste at their Endicott Oil Field near Prudhoe Bay, Alaska. As part of a plea agreement BP Amoco agreed to pay $22 million in criminal and civil penalties. In 1995, the BP subcontractor working the Endicott Field was found guilty of illegally injecting hazardous waste back into the groundwater. The subcontractor was ordered to pay a $15 million fine for violating the Clean Water Act.

· On July 24, 2000, BP Amoco launched a new public relations campaign claiming that the company was " Beyond Petroleum." The same day they made the announcement, the company agreed to pay $10 million in penalties for environmental and pollution violations discovered by the EPA.

· BP is responsible for the second largest oil spill in California history, a 400,000 gallon spill that covered twenty square miles near Huntington Beach, in 1991.

· Phillips Petroleum is responsible for two lethal explosions in Pasadena, Texas that killed more than 20 people

· The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) accused Exxon of nearly 200 violations of the Clean Air Act, and demanded $4.7 million in fines, in 1998 alone.

· In August 1998, Exxon and Tosco agreed to pay $4.8 million in damages and for environmental restoration after discharging selenium, a carcinogen, into San Francisco Bay.

· Chevron has paid more than $70 million in fines, settlements, and penalties stemming from environmental violations.

· The President of Chevron U.S.A. appeared in federal court in May 1992 to plead guilty to 65 violations of the Clean Water Act and pay $8 million in fines, for illegal discharges from the company's offshore oil- and gas-production platform "Grace" off the California Coast.

· In the last 25 years there have been at least 36 spills, leaks, blowouts, or illegal discharges from Chevron oil fields, drilling rigs, or pipelines, including a spill in the Gulf of Mexico.



Really sure?

It does not matter one bit what different companies do in California, Texas, or elsewhere. Alaska is a totally different area, with totally different rules, regulations, and ways of doing the work.

Comparing anywhere else with Alaska is apples and oranges. Totally irrelevant.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

A $6 million cleanup of the oiled tundra is essentially complete, and DEC officials say they believe environmental damage to the tundra will be minimal.

It is being cleaned up, with minimal damage. How does minimal, equal severe, in anyones book? Oh, and that's the DEC (Department of Environmental Conservation) stating there will be minimal damage, not BP or some oil company.

This spill wasn't in an ecologically sensitive wildlife refuge. And it was, luckily, not next to an aquifer or creek or access to groundwater. I'm supposed to belive we can count on luck to keep all the spills in areas where they can be cleaned up? You just told me post before this that such things were a thing of the past. Apparently the very near past.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

It does not matter one bit what different companies do in California, Texas, or elsewhere. Alaska is a totally different area, with totally different rules, regulations, and ways of doing the work.

Comparing anywhere else with Alaska is apples and oranges. Totally irrelevant.

Yeah. Cept we are talking about the same companies. You're position now is that they are happy to fuck up california and Texas et al, but they are enviornmentally sensitive to what they do in Alaska, Never mind that the fisrt on the list is in lAaska.

 

[WyoD_S]

Oh yes, gone forever, all the way back to 1998. Gone forever, that spill I posted was on the 16 of arpil 2006. Oh yes gone forever my freind, just like it was...well day before yesterday! But we promise, it's all under control now. Yes sireee, no more spills like that one, at least none today.

As pointed out already, that spill is cleaned. The leaky pipeline is in the process of being fixed, no permanent harm was done.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

As pointed out already, that spill is cleaned. The leaky pipeline is in the process of being fixed, no permanent harm was done.

It spilled. When did minimal harm become no harm? And what guarentee exists the next spill will not be in an area that is significantly more densitive or that the damage won't be more wide spread. besides which, you told me this kind of thing was in the past, it dosen't happen anymore, not with our new technology and methods. It does happen, it still happens, just like in the bad old days. Only now, it's not as easy to cover up.

 

[WyoD_S]

Yeah. Cept we are talking about the same companies. You're position now is that they are happy to fuck up california and Texas et al, but they are enviornmentally sensitive to what they do in Alaska, Never mind that the fisrt on the list is in lAaska.

Did I say they were happy to fuck up anywhere else besides Alaska? No, I didn't.

What I said is that the work procedures and controls are so different in Alaska that comparing that to anywhere else is irrelevant. If you knew anything about oil exploration and production you might understand.

 

[WyoD_S]

It spilled. When did minimal harm become no harm? And what guarentee exists the next spill will not be in an area that is significantly more densitive or that the damage won't be more wide spread.

There is a guarantee that it will be? Perhaps with the lessons learned the next spill will be much smaller and will be cleaned up faster with absolutely no impact.

When did minimal harm become a reason to prohibit anything?

 

[Colleen Thomas]

Did I say they were happy to fuck up anywhere else besides Alaska? No, I didn't.

What I said is that the work procedures and controls are so different in Alaska that comparing that to anywhere else is irrelevant. If you knew anything about oil exploration and production you might understand.

BP, is still paying for vioolations, IN Alaska. With all your different controls. And they only got caught, because a whistle blower came forward. The controls are meaningless, if the compmnaies are willing to ignore them. There are controls in Texas and California too. There were controls in NY when GE dumped PBC's into the hudson, there were controls in Bopal India, for all the good it did them.

Your position has come down to I trust the oil companies to do what's right, even in the face of mounmental evidence they, and most other industy, don't.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

There is a guarantee that it will be? Perhaps with the lessons learned the next spill will be much smaller and will be cleaned up faster with absolutely no impact.

When did minimal harm become a reason to prohibit anything?

When there is no need for even minimal harm to be tolerated. And you have yet to provide any clarion reason why we should open up ANWR to drilling and incur the risks of ecologicval harm. Not one. You don't even know how much oil is down there. No one does. You don't pretend it's enough to lsignificantly ower our dependence on foerign oil or to lower the prices for consumers.

ETA: And if we aren't drilling there and there are no pipelines, that's a pretty solid guarentee we won't have a spill there.

 

[WyoD_S]

BP, is still paying for vioolations, IN Alaska. With all your different controls. And they only got caught, because a whistle blower came forward. The controls are meaningless, if the compmnaies are willing to ignore them. There are controls in Texas and California too. There were controls in NY when GE dumped PBC's into the hudson, there were controls in Bopal India, for all the good it did them.

Your position has come down to I trust the oil companies to do what's right, even in the face of mounmental evidence they, and most other industy, don't.

My position is, the North Slope of Alaska is not a cesspool of toxic waste by anyones definition, and never will be. ANWR would be different only in that there would be less spilled due to stricter regulation and more modern equipment and methodology.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

My position is, the North Slope of Alaska is not a cesspool of toxic waste by anyones definition, and never will be. ANWR would be different only in that there would be less spilled due to stricter regulation and more modern equipment and methodology.

Your position is not rationally supportable. You demand I accept tenets of it, without any supporting proof that those positions are correct.

You demand I accept regulation makes misdeed in other areas moot, yet those areas had regulatons that were violated.

You demand I acept new methods and methodology make past disasters moot, but I can show Spills that are a days old and egrigious violations that are less than a decade old.

You demand we drill in an area where there is no supporting evidence we need to drill.

In short, your position is a house of cards, based on Aprori assumptions about the ethics of bussiness and about the need to drill. Apriori assumptions I don't share.

Your position will win out in the end of course, because big money is involved and The administration is rolling over for any bussiness that is willing to make a campaign contribution. And they will drill, and there will be spills and there will be ecological damage, but at that point, you will be abel to fall back on the good old rational that accidents happen and that's just the price of doing bussiness.

 

[kendo1]

We need more ducks.

 

[WyoD_S]

Your position is not rationally supportable. You demand I accept tenets of it, without any supporting proof that those positions are correct.

You demand I accept regulation makes misdeed in other areas moot, yet those areas had regulatons that were violated.

You demand I acept new methods and methodology make past disasters moot, but I can show Spills that are a days old and egrigious violations that are less than a decade old.

You demand we drill in an area where there is no supporting evidence we need to drill.

In short, your position is a house of cards, based on Aprori assumptions about the ethics of bussiness and about the need to drill. Apriori assumptions I don't share.

Your position will win out in the end of course, because big money is involved and The administration is rolling over for any bussiness that is willing to make a campaign contribution. And they will drill, and there will be spills and there will be ecological damage, but at that point, you will be abel to fall back on the good old rational that accidents happen and that's just the price of doing bussiness.

The best estimates available show a greater than 10% reduction in dependency on foreign oil. That is not insignificant.

Sure, there are spills that are days old. Coming from pipelines and equipment that is decades old, using technology that is decades old. Using new technology and new equipment, this risk is greatly minimized.

What evidence would support 'a need to drill' anyway? There isn't any. By that line of thinking, all drilling should immediately stop, everywhere. That is absurd.

Your opposition is not rationally supportable. Your opposition is rhetorical and emotional. The evidence you demand is not available, nor will it ever be to the extreme that you would require it to be to change your view.

There is a price to doing business, no matter what that business is. I would rather have a heated home and a car to drive than worry about a few plants being harmed.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

The best estimates available show a greater than 10% reduction in dependency on foreign oil. That is not insignificant.

Sure, there are spills that are days old. Coming from pipelines and equipment that is decades old, using technology that is decades old. Using new technology and new equipment, this risk is greatly minimized.

What evidence would support 'a need to drill' anyway? There isn't any. By that line of thinking, all drilling should immediately stop, everywhere. That is absurd.

Your opposition is not rationally supportable. Your opposition is rhetorical and emotional. The evidence you demand is not available, nor will it ever be to the extreme that you would require it to be to change your view.

There is a price to doing business, no matter what that business is. I would rather have a heated home and a car to drive than worry about a few plants being harmed.

Since you need guidance to rational dbate:

10% reduction still leaves us 90% dependant. In this argument, You cannot produce irrefuteable evidence of a need to drill, but I never asked of that. I asked for substantial evidence. You have not demonstrated, in any way, shape or form, that there is a substantive difference between being dependant 100% on imports, or only 90% for that differential between what we consume and produce. A rational defense of your position as well as demonstrable evidence of a need to drill could be provided by simply showing that difference, between 100% and 90% is in some way of great enough benefit to warrant destruction of a pristine wildnerness.

By your own admission your desire to heat your home and drive your car is not affected by drilling in Anwr. You have admitted it will be unlikely to produce a decrese in prices to consumers. This little jab then, demonstartes a sophistic attempt to correlate unrelated things. You are implying that your heated home and car are to be given up for the expedient of a plant. Yet you can have your home heated and your car without killing the plant.

I have provided a preponderance of evdence that vussiness is not ethical, that it does not observe the rules unless forced to and even then will circumvent them when they think they can get away with it. I've provided evidence this has been done, not only in other states and countries, but in Alaska itself. I have presetned evidence, that your concrete example of Pruddhoe Bay has been the site of numerous spills and of deliberate contamination by BP.

In short, I've knocked your dick in the dirt. Your every assertion can be logically and with a preponderence of evidence refuted. The only one you have been able to stick to is that 10% of our dependance would be lowered, but you have presented that fact without any contextural evidence that it means doodley. You just keep insisting, in a pendantic mantra, that this is a good thing. With the aparent assumption that if you say it enough times, it will gain enough weight to make despoiling a pristine wildness the better alternative.

If someone who is green wants to take up the gauntlet, by all means do. I've had enough Amican logic to stick in my craw for months.

 

[rgraham666]

It's difficult to get a person to believe something when their paycheque depends on them believing something else.

 

[Guest]

It's difficult to get a person to believe something when their paycheque depends on them believing something else.

Yep.

 

[amicus]

WyoD S....

Not that you need another round of appreciation from me, but nonetheless, I feel oblligated to offer it.

Whether it is global warming, ozone depletion, Abortion or gay marriage, or the oil companies, the left on this forum band together and chant the same mantra, time and time again.

And when you poke holes in their emotional and irrational rhetoric, I think they have a selected list of perjoratives they share without shame.

I listened to what the left calls the hated Fox network tonight, the irrascible Bill O'Riley and was not surprised that he joined forces with the left and accused the oil companies of conspiratorial price gouging across the board.

There really are few sources of consistent free market talking points anywhere, which is not surprising as 'classic economics' has not been taught in colleges, (for the most part) for well over a generation now.

The overall, general hatred of big business in general, be it oil, coal, electricity, manufacturing of any kind, is rampant as the brainwashing begins in the cartoons and kid shows on television and is reinforced from grade one to graduate school.

A sad state of affairs. Anywho, enjoyed your comments and I hope you hang around for a while...

amicus...

 

[WyoD_S]

It's difficult to get a person to believe something when their paycheque depends on them believing something else.

If you are referring to me.

I pointed out in another thread that less than 20% of my paycheck comes from contracts my boss has with the oil field. I could easily live without it.

 

[WyoD_S]

Since you need guidance to rational dbate:

10% reduction still leaves us 90% dependant. In this argument, You cannot produce irrefuteable evidence of a need to drill, but I never asked of that. I asked for substantial evidence. You have not demonstrated, in any way, shape or form, that there is a substantive difference between being dependant 100% on imports, or only 90% for that differential between what we consume and produce. A rational defense of your position as well as demonstrable evidence of a need to drill could be provided by simply showing that difference, between 100% and 90% is in some way of great enough benefit to warrant destruction of a pristine wildnerness.

By your own admission your desire to heat your home and drive your car is not affected by drilling in Anwr. You have admitted it will be unlikely to produce a decrese in prices to consumers. This little jab then, demonstartes a sophistic attempt to correlate unrelated things. You are implying that your heated home and car are to be given up for the expedient of a plant. Yet you can have your home heated and your car without killing the plant.

I have provided a preponderance of evdence that vussiness is not ethical, that it does not observe the rules unless forced to and even then will circumvent them when they think they can get away with it. I've provided evidence this has been done, not only in other states and countries, but in Alaska itself. I have presetned evidence, that your concrete example of Pruddhoe Bay has been the site of numerous spills and of deliberate contamination by BP.

In short, I've knocked your dick in the dirt. Your every assertion can be logically and with a preponderence of evidence refuted. The only one you have been able to stick to is that 10% of our dependance would be lowered, but you have presented that fact without any contextural evidence that it means doodley. You just keep insisting, in a pendantic mantra, that this is a good thing. With the aparent assumption that if you say it enough times, it will gain enough weight to make despoiling a pristine wildness the better alternative.

If someone who is green wants to take up the gauntlet, by all means do. I've had enough Amican logic to stick in my craw for months.

For one thing, we are not 100% dependant on foreign oil. So your argument is irrelevant and a blatant and obvious distortion of the facts.

So business is not ethical, big fucking deal. Neither is government, the greens, the democrats, republicans, or independants. The world is run by various levels of corruption. Live with it. Learn to deal with it. Any vision of utopia where everyone follows the rules is ridiculous.

Yes, there has been contamination, I've admitted this.

What you missed, and I said repeatedly, is that the contamination is being caused by equipment and methods that are decades old. I see equipment at work that was made in the 60's and is still in the field. I see other equipment that has been put on line in just the last few years. The difference between old and new is astronomical. Again, someone like you with no knowledge of the real working world cannot understand this.

You seem to be partly hung up on the cost of oil in all of this. I don't care how many new wells are drilled and brought online in the entire world. The price isn't coming down because of it. That's a fact of business. Once again, live with it.

Prudhoe Bay has had spills, and they are either cleaned up or in the process of being cleaned. So what. Are the caribou dieing in record numbers? No. Are the birds no longer migrating? No. Is the entire area a toxic wasteland for hundreds of years to come? Absolutely not.

Your arguement seems to be "if just one drop is spilled it isn't worth it". Get real.

In short, my dick is just fine. Your ignorance of the oil field and how things work is staggering. Bone up on that research, learn a few things, then come back and we'll talk again. I've not seen one "logical" refutation. I have seen emotional, baseless rhetoric and a pattern of systematically ignoring the facts.

Amican logic? Nice jab. He and I may agree on some things, but certainly not all. Though after this thread I'm beginning to think he may be the closest ally I have here. So be it. Y'all keep right on living in your dream worlds, but don't cry too much when the real world comes along and bitchslaps you.

 

[Lucifer_Carroll]

Biologist here. Most ill effects take time. It is the accumulation of poisons or their transferance down the line. One can not even pick one hot-topic animal collection as problems can affect even animals far off. For instance spray insecticides had affects on birds for miles and miles. Birds seem particularly to get the shaft in most ecological disasters. Likely cause they do not breed as quickly.

There are also the cases of wind patterns blowing poisons through the air. Sweeden can tell all of us how the ill-predicaments of Chernobyl's disaster still plauges both the environmental sanctity and the health of the people. Like all ecological disasters, the originators prove reluctant to pay for damages or to be held to heel for crimes and instead scream that how could anyone be certain it was entirely their fault.

I live in California. Enron and co pushed deregulation in our state. When it turned out to be a failure, the blame was given to the Democrat mayor by the same forces that pushed for deregulation. There is no responsibility anymore. Without responsibility, without punishment for the ruination of land that is not their express property, without punishment for damages to health, there will be trepidation.
One can simply like our young fellow assume they will not, nor will they ever exist despite the evidence of the past or one can assume that they will arise like our ever so wisened and well-researched red-haired beauty. The evidence of the past and scientific realities on corrosion, the toxic nature of the chemicals involved, effusion of said chemicals, and the reality involved in transporting and working seems to point in her favor admittedly.

However, the true point underlying all of this is that it is in vain. While ANWR gives conservatives another reason to hate weird hippy-looking environmentalists and liberals and distract them from the reality that they have gleefully endorsed torture, the shredding of the Constitution, the enstatement of the executive branch as sole branch of authority (supreme court decisions and congress laws have been openly flouted), a removal of all civil liberties and constitutionally given freedoms, and a blitz style of invasion warfare, it has little else of value.

ANWR will be drilled.

Perhaps not today, but someday. Even if environmentalists won until the bitter end, our current oil supplies will not last forever. Saudi oil is on a decrease, our own oil can't prop up our demand and our access to the big new discovery in central asia seems less and less likely to make it into America thanks to a failed gamble that invasion would create a stable enough country to run a pipeline through (afghanistan, iraq, and perhaps soon iran). Since we are not moving into any other form of energy, we will eventually require every possible source we can get our hands on. Where it is will matter less in order to keep all remnants of civilization going. Choosing between an Alaskan peserve and the continued running of one's laptop and access to modern comforts becomes easier for many when it becomes an either-or.

It will happen. The odds are favorable that it will cause irreparable harm and so on and so on.

Meanwhile, ooh those environmentalists talking about biodeversity and toxic effusion and all dem big words so fancy. Why do they hate freedom? And yeah yeah yeah.

 

[Pure]

Shape up, Wyo

Starting with your original post, you have not presented the relevant facts, but rather chosen a couple alleged ones--like that the caribou are fine in Prudhoe area--and erected a right-wing advocacy castle on them.

I have included the scientific journal refs. on the state of the caribou.

http://www.alaskawild.org/assets/publications/factsheet-drilling impacts.pdf

The impact of oil development on the north shore.

From 1996 to 1999,
approximately 1600 spills occurred,
involving more than 1.2 million gallons
of diesel fuel, oil, acid, biocide,
ethylene glycol, drilling fluid, and
other materials. In the Arctic, the
environmental impacts of oil spills
are more severe and last longer
than in more temperate climates.
Diesel fuel, for instance—the most
frequently spilled product on the
North Slope—is acutely toxic to
plants. Even after decades have
passed, tundra vegetation has been
unable to recover from diesel spills.

Story about the report, "Broken Promises"

Broken Promises assesses those claims by comparing them with the documented impact of past and present North Slope oil development, the industry's environmental track record at Prudhoe Bay and in the National Petroleum Reserve – Alaska (NPR-A), real technological trends in the oil industry, and other factors. The result is a clear record of broken promises on the North Slope that casts serious doubt on the reassurances being made by drilling proponents and their allies today.
The report is at

http://www.wilderness.org/Library/D...he-Reality-of-Big-Oil-in-America-s-Arctic.pdf

###

17 National Research
Council. 2003. p. 21;
227; 239.

18 Nellemann, C. and R.D.
Cameron. 1998.
"Cumulative impacts of an
evolving oil-field complex on
the distribution of calving
caribou." Can. J. Zool 76:
1425-1430.

19 Nellemann, C. and R.D.
Cameron. 1996. "Effects of
petroleum development on
terrain preferences of calving
caribou." Arctic 49(1):
23-28.


20 Cameron, R.D., W.T.
Smith, R.G. White, and B.
Griffith, "The Central Arctic
Caribou Herd." Pp. 38-45
in: U.S. Geological Survey.
2002. Arctic Refuge Coastal
Plain Terrestrial Wildlife
Research Summaries.
Biological Science Report.
USGS/BRD/BSR-2002-0001.

Among the report's findings are the following:
[summary of findings, not quotations]

· Drilling is not environmentally benign: While industry and its political allies argue that drilling on the North Slope has been environmentally responsible and limited to a small "footprint," the Prudhoe Bay field encompasses an industrial complex covering more than 1000 square miles.

The National Academy of Sciences recently confirmed that North Slope drilling operations cause environmental impacts far beyond the industrial facilities themselves, including harmful air and water pollution, disruptions to wildlife and wilderness. Oil companies have been fined millions of dollars in recent years for environmental and safety violations on the North Slope. Native Alaskans from villages close to the Alpine oil field have increasingly raised concerns about the rising incidence of asthma in their villages and threats to the wildlife on which their subsistence culture depends.


· The "winter only" fallacy: Alaska politicians insist that oil exploration in the Arctic would only occur in the winter. However, they rarely mention that once oil is discovered, oil production activities actually occur year-round. Summer production is particularly harmful to wildlife, but even during the winter months oil exploration has scarred the tundra and can cause disruption to polar bears, musk oxen, and other year-round residents of the area.


· Ice roads are a smoke screen: Drilling proponents often claim that using ice roads will minimize the impact of oil exploration and drilling. However, rising temperatures caused by global warming have shrunk the season during which ice-roads are practical by 40 percent in recent years, and the US Fish and Wildlife Service has suggested there isn't enough fresh water in the Coastal Plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to build the required ice roads there. Even the newest onshore oil fields on the North Slope contain permanent gravel roads, and there are many proposals for new roads.


· Environmental standards for North Slope drilling are getting weaker, not stronger: Drilling advocates often promise that the strictest environmental standards would be applied to Arctic Refuge oil development. Sadly, regulation of the oil industry in Alaska has been weakening in recent years, with Alaska Governor Frank Murkowski undermining state environmental oversight and the US Department of the Interior rolling back federal regulations in the neighboring National Petroleum Reserve – Alaska.



excerpts from the report itself

According to the National Academy
of Sciences, wildlife impacts from
oil industry operations and infrastructure
on the North Slope include
direct mortality of grizzly bears,
reduced reproductive rates of birds
such as brant due to predation,
and altered distribution of caribou
calving and reduced reproductive
productivity. Habitat for breeding
and molting birds has been directly
altered by gravel fill in wetlands.

• "The extent of disturbance greatly
exceeds the physical ‘footprint’ of
an oil-field complex," according to
caribou biologists.18 Caribou use
of preferred habitats declined substantially
as the density of roads
increased, according to studies of
the Kuparuk oil field.19 Caribou
densities decreased within 4 km of
pipelines and roads, and there have
been region-wide changes in calving
distribution for the Central Arctic Herd
at Prudhoe Bay.20

[sources footnoted are given above at ###]

 

[BlackShanglan]

It does not matter one bit what different companies do in California, Texas, or elsewhere. Alaska is a totally different area, with totally different rules, regulations, and ways of doing the work.

Comparing anywhere else with Alaska is apples and oranges. Totally irrelevant.

What I said is that the work procedures and controls are so different in Alaska that comparing that to anywhere else is irrelevant. If you knew anything about oil exploration and production you might understand.

I don't think the point being made was that the industry regulations or protocols are similar there. I believe that the point goes to ethos.

If the oil companies had cleaned up their acts across the board and really dedicated themselves to environmental preservation as well as company profit, then I might be inclined to put some faith in their claims about ANWR because I would perceive them as people with a consistent dedication to acting ethically and repsonsibly. If, however, they are content to play as close to the letter of the law as they can wherever they are and continue to cause serious environmental problems when they see the opportunity to do so without heavy repercussions, then I have to believe that they are untrustworthy and uninterested in the environment, and that any loophole I give them will be ruthlessly exploited. That makes me very hesitant trust either their evidence or their assurances about their future behavior, and it certainly makes me want to keep them out of ANWR. Why take the risk of working in a potentially disastrous situation with someone you can't trust?

 

[amicus]

Not that it matters and not that anyone even cares, but the market system in a free society is also a market system in a society that recognizes and protects property rights of both the individual and the corporation.

And I don't need to hear about corrupt judges, courts and politicians being bribed to overlook violations in the laws that were passed to protect everyone's property.

Since government still owns much of the land upon which mining and drilling takes place, a simple answer to pollution and environmental damage would be strict enforcement of property rights laws.

That is the easy way to accomplish the same goal that huge EPA, OSHA and a hundred other pork projects fail so miserably at.

It would be complex no doubt and filled with attornies and lawsuits, but then, that is why we have law and the court system.

Much of the pollution that has in the past and currently fouls the environment is done so with government permission and licensing. A strict and well define category of property right law and total private ownship of land is the only just and honorable way to achieve the desired goal of protecting both the environment and the property common to all people.

Big government just can't and won't accomplish it. Russia, a Communist country, before China, a Communist country, with max government have and are creating the worst environmental disasters in human history.

We desperately need individual property rights enforced.

amicus...